Resumen:

The traditional view that sharecropping was a cause of low productivity in
European agriculture prior to the Second World War has been challenged by
economic historians, and today the contact is often considered as efficient at
reducing the monitoring costsThe traditional view that sharecropping was a cause of low productivity in
European agriculture prior to the Second World War has been challenged by
economic historians, and today the contact is often considered as efficient at
reducing the monitoring costs associated with labour and allocation of risk
between landowners and farmers, especially when capital markets were weak
for working capital. Yet if sharecropping was a relatively efficient contract, why
was it not found more often? This paper looks at the vine, a crop that was
widespread in Europe and that has been central to the current debates. It
argues that while the literature has been right to emphasise the importance of
the high monitoring costs, it has ignored the equally important costs associated
with dividing the harvest. These were sufficiently large to make the contract
unattractive, except in the few cases where the landowner was prepared to be
actively involved in wine making and its sale, such as was found in Beaujolais
or Tuscany.[+][-]